Art Scope 2009 - 2011: Invisible Memories (II)
Exhibition in Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (原美術館), Tokyo 10/Sep -11/Dec/2011 This is the second half of my reflection on the exhibition on Invisible Memory. Koizumi's second video in the exhibition is 'Portrait of a Young Samurai' (2009). The artist's metafictional approach continues to characterize this work: in the video the director coaches a young actor to enact a kamikaze fighter at the moment before he departs for a suicidal mission. After several takes, the young actor's mild-manneredness still falls short of the expectation of the director who insists on seeing a more powerful outburst of emotion and a more compelling expression of physical response. The video documents how the young actor matures in his role as a kamikaze samurai and manages to cry out his valediction speech with tears and mucus all over his face. To foreigners, kamikaze samurai is probably one of the most distinguished forms of nationalism in Japanese history. They were tho...